Hey Murph,

Boy - not bringing home a paycheck is beginning to get on my nerves a bit…ya know?  Here I am, a grown woman, not very far away from the time in her life when she should be thinking about retirement, and, instead, I have no health insurance, and no job.  Makes a girl think about buying a bottle of wine.  I could just sit on my back porch and enjoy a quiet evening all by myself sipping and smoking.  What would that first sip taste like?  Would it linger on my tongue, and soak all my taste buds with the solid…

Dear Murph,

It’s been a long time since I’ve written.  After my doggie died I was in a funk and didn’t do much of anything.  Then I got some kind of flu and was laid out for 2 days.  I’m feeling fine, but I’m in a kind of  no-man’s-land lately.  I have no income, have been looking for a job, have been trying to do some writing, but I feel like I’m just floundering.  Here I am, a grown adult who should be retiring in a few years, and I have no financial security in place to ease the burdens of…

Dear Murph,

I knew it was coming…..I knew it for a long time.  She’s been slowing down with a steady rhythm that always ends at the same place.  Even though she was a spitfire way beyond her years, the last couple of months have been a constant deterioration in her movement, her eating patterns and her interest in anything beyond the small comfort zone of her bedding.  She has been blind, yet her eyes constantly oozed a mucous goo that had to be treated several times a day with special drops.  She was on a regimen of five pills in the…

Hey Murph,

I just spent a wonderful afternoon celebrating my dear friend’s birthday.  A small group of women gathered at her home, in the middle of The Blue Ridge  Mountains - at 59 I was the youngest.  This was not your typical group of “mature women .”  One of them, previously an IBM Executive’s wife, now speaks to dragons, reads crystals, and follows many Native American practices and spirituality.  One of them is a reflexologist who always must consult “spirit” before she does anything, is completely organic,  is a walking encyclopedia on anything that comes from the earth, and a couple…

Hey Murph,

I spent this morning cleaning my boyfriend’s apartment as he is now in long term rehab.  I went there a couple weeks ago and got most of his belongings but today I had to do the dirty work….you know….cleaning the refrigerator, toilet, cabinets….you know……always save the best until last.  I was just a little resentful about having to scrub the toilet, not knowing who had done what in that area.  I found various objects that definitely did not belong to my boyfriend, but that comes with the territory of going through the wreckage of someone’s past.  People must have…

Dear Murph,

I’m back home in Virginia tonight.  My luggage, unfortunately, is not.  I assume it will arrive sometime…..who knows?  It could be sitting in Newark.  There’s not much I can do about that anyway, so I’m giving that one to you.  I’m also giving you the resentment of the day….disappointment.  I’m really letting that emotion rule my life lately.  I’m disappointed that my son kept something from me.  I’m disappointed that when I came home from Chicago, my house was a mess.  I’m disappointed that someone I love is in long term rehab because of his own choices and actions. …

Dear Murph,

Thanks so much for giving me this wonderful week with my family and friends and for allowing me to fill my soul with memories I had not thought about for a very long time.  Thanks for the healing that has taken place and for realizing, once again, the importance of family.

Today, Saturday, my brother, sister-in-law and I went to see my nephews and their families.  I had not seen them for many years and one of my nephews has 3 phenomenal children, age 15, 13 and 9.  Although I hadn’t seen them for almost 6 years, they greeted me…

Hey Murph,

Not so good at writing every day, huh?  But being back in my hometown of Chicago has been a very emotional experience this time around.  For so long I have put my youth on a shelf and don’t go there very often.  I spent a lot of years in therapy going through all that stuff and I’ve blocked out many years that I didn’t consider important to what was happening to my in the present moment (how zen of me!).  But coming back this time has really done a  number on me - a very good number.  I am…

Hey Big Guy,

The past two days in Chicago have been a constant ride on the “life is great” bus line and I don’t want to get off.  From the moment I arrived on Monday night to right now (Wednesday at 11:00pm) I have had some absolutely extraordinary experiences.  For the longest time I have put my youth in a drawer and making sure it stayed locked.  I had always figured that it was over and chose not to take the time to remember all the “good stuff” that happened to me growing up.  You know there was more than enough…

I finally made it to Chicago today.  Gonna spend a little time with friends and family and try to network and get some feedback on my manuscript.  The trip was uneventful - I read half of a novel and my old friend Mary and her fiance Ron picked me up at the airport.  It is now exactly midnight so I’m just getting under the wire for my letter today.

My boyfriend call me for the first time since he left for long term treatment.  He sounded healthy, hopeful, grateful for this opportunity to enter a long term rehab program where he…

This blog needs to be about sex. But, like my life, it has constantly been sidetracked by my addiction.

I live with an emotional abuse and incest survivor. This fact colors every single day of my life. It taints and poisons the most basic and honest of my human impulses – love, affection, intimacy. I need to be growing in patience and love for my wife, learning how to meet her needs and open her heart. I need to be nurturing a place where she can redefine sensuality, in her own time, with someone who loves and cherishes her. This can’t…

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday - I was so exhausted when I finally finished doing “Saturday” things that I settled in my bed for a little while to watch The History Channel - that was the end of it for me.  So, here I am, on Sunday afternoon, making sure I write before the rest of the day gets away from me.

Murph, I can’t stop…..I can’t stop thinking, moving around, obsessing, eating junk food in the middle of the night, running here and there, doing all the “stuff” I’ve convinced myself has to be down right now.  I feel like…

Dear Murph,

I’m gonna get right to the point.  I’m leaving for Chicago on Monday (my hometown) to visit family and friends and to do some networking in the publishing arena.  I have an older sister who has not spoken to me for nearly 5 years, primarily due to the fact that I fell in love with someone who has a rough road trying to stay clean.  As you know, this disease puts us on the emotion roller coaster and gives us the ride of our lives.  Bottom line - my sister has refused to speak to me since this man…

Hey Old Buddy, Old Pal -

Once again it’s the end of the day and I this is the first moment I’ve had to actually sit down.  I was talking to a friend today at the clinic where I volunteer and he asked me if I thought time was moving at mock speed as we get older.  I had to agree.  I seems like just yesterday it was February - the weeks go by faster than I ever remember.  As a child, it used to be eons between one Christmas and the next and now it seems as if seasons change…

Hey Murph,

I can barely keep my eyes open, but as I promised, I’m writing you.  Today was another one of those “where is my brain?” days.  Too much to do…..didn’t get it all done, but I got to have lunch with an old friend who always lifts my spirits, and that was delightful.  I just found out that the office that we used to rent for TSR is being listed because we’ve not been able to pay the rent.  That was actually okay with me.  I’m not there much these days, and since I’ve been looking for a paying job,…

Dear Murph,

Well, here I am, as promised, so at least I’ve made it to day 2!   As you know, things have been quite shaky the last few days.  My boyfriend entered long term rehab in a moment of total surrender, so making  and instituting all the necessary decisions was nothing short of frenetic. But I had a funny feeling you may have had a little something to do with all the arrangements, because within 36 hours, the decision was made, the plane tickets were purchased and he was on his way.  I’ve heard that he is doing very well and…

Hey Murph,

I was just sitting here thinking about the first time we met.  Do you remember?  It was almost 7 years ago - doesn’t seem that long and somehow it seems like we’ve been best buddies forever.  I was sitting in a jail cell - had been there 9 months for all the crap that comes with active addiction.  Remember that little Black Woman who came to pray in tongues over anyone who wanted?  Remember how I walked up to the bars and she put her hands on my head through the steep pipes and the most beautiful clear sounds…

They’re cleaning out my grandparents’ house – the rooms are full of boxes and the walls are bare. Grandma’s a collector, of things beautiful or sentimental or remotely useful, so there’s a lot to go through. The depression generation, or “The Greatest Generation”, according to Grandpa and Tom Brokaw, tends to save things that I would throw away. But they can only fit so much into their new “home”, an assisted living rental, so most of their stuff has to go.

Mom found a flower pot I made for Grandma in the fifth grade. Money was tight that year, so we…

since I’ve written.  As some of you may know, financial hard times have hit The Second Road, along with the rest of the country and, as a result, we have not been able to pay any salaries or update the site for a while.  But I know that we will weather this storm along with everyone else and I have made a decision that I am going to be writing a daily blog to my HP (whom I call Murph) in this very space beginning immediately.  Life in recovery has made me more aware than ever how I am connected…

Whenever my grandpa got into a tizzy about something, my grandma used to say, “Patience is a virtue.  Possess it if you can.  It’s seldom in a woman, and never in a man.”  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Well, patience was the topic at the meeting I attended this evening.  There was a relative newcomer in the group and he was saying how he had just come off his pink cloud and wanted to get these steps over NOW.  He was just working on his 3rd step and was told to read the 3rd step chapter in the 12 and 12 every…

I relapsed. I was prescribed Vicodin for a back injury and I thought I could handle it. I was proud that I told my wife immediately about the prescription, gave her the bottle and let her dole out the pills. But I started banking them, saving them up and taking handfuls at the end of the day so I could get a little rush.

Years ago we volunteered with a foster child, a tough one who stayed in the highest security group homes. They’d give him his little cup of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics and then check under his tongue to make…

Never is there a begin…nor an end

Counting the days,

For whom or what?

Marking the time. WHY?

Whether monthly, daily, or by the hour.

Attitude never should be dour.

For even so–it is LIVING which we are all still doing.

And where there is life…there is, yes……..

…….HOPE!

A lot of people don’t like changes.  They keep their living room furniture in the same pattern for years, never even thinking of moving a table, or, God forbid, a couch, to give the room a different feng shui.  Many people would never try foods that they can’t pronounce, nor would they ever think of vacation in a land that does not know what a McFlurry is.  I was raised in such a household, as were many of my peers in the 50’s and 60’s.  Our living room never changed, neither did our menu or our vacation destinations.  I was…

At once I am bombarded with a multitude of thoughts, crashing in from all sides.  I go to more meetings than ever before for a number of reasons.  Mainly is that I may see how others are doing, to meet out-of-town Peeps, and new, freshly sobered guys, scared, shaking, wondering things like, “What in the world have I done to deserve being in this Fk’d-up place (Alcoholics Anonymous)?”

Then there ARE the friends I have made through years of meetings, and the new friends always coming and going. One such friend, sober 18 months, sat in a meeting Sunday morning, suddenly…

I’ve been depressed since yesterday, when I innocently brought my parents dinner (before work, I stopped by in the morning) and found my father hunched over breakfast in terrible pain. Lower right quadrant of the belly, a 9 out of 10. For an old stoic like my dad, that’s bad.

So I cancel out a couple of patients and take him with my mother to the ER and wait for an evaluation. Can’t wait all day, so I leave my mom with her phone. Gotta’ go. Let me know what happens.

It’s a terrible feeling, leaving your 84 year old mother in…

Hey folks, here is a video that TSR made, which features several amazing recovery stories and promotes the importance of addiction recovery! Enjoy (both parts)!
Follow the break for videos. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

During my final year of drugging, drinking, and anthing-ing, an incident occurred which I will remember always.  I had been working the night shift at a very busy bar in North Naples, FL.  My hours, 6-2 six nights a week, I tended a very busy bar, and played also my violin to sort of entertain the Peeps.

By the time I got to work, I was pretty much bombed, and by the end of the night (2 AM) I was speeded up like a jet plane.  Ten minutes of cleaning the lounge, actually took me two hours, as I drank whatever…

Twelve years ago I was rushing into a grocery store, trying to get a few things on my way to my next errand.  I, as usual, was moving at the speed of light, thinking about what I had to do next….when I saw her.  There she was, a big, black, furry dog with small deep set brown eyes and a face that reminded me of a black bear.  It only took one look, for both of us.  I knew.  She knew.  She was mine.  I was hers.  I brought her home to my little town house which already was home…

SOME MORE STUFF!

Winter will soon be but a memory…WHAT a memory!  Having lived in Naples, Florida 45 years, I can tell you, yes, I still remember.  Even now, when I allow a thought of those 32 years I spent in Cincinnati to live a moment with me–I can “feel” my fingers frozen, my body shaking with the cold.  And I might be exaggerating here, but I seem to recall being often in a gloomy or semi state of depression–the SO many overcast days of bleakness.

It is sort of like having been alive on December 7, 1941– Pearl Harbor–you can never…

Well, once again it is snowing like @&$%# where I live and I am homebound.  It also looks like no one will be moving out of their abodes for several days, due to the “inclement weather” we are experiencing in the Mid-Atlantic.  Being hold up in my home with six dog and two cats makes for some interesting circumstances and it is a constant effort to keep the back deck shoveled so the dogs have somewhere they can walk and not get totally lost in the snow.  That cats, on the other hand, could care less - after all, they…